First
Example Ever Found of These Special-Use Bricks, Known from Ancient
Texts
to be Used in Childbirth

The
brick's main scene shows a mother with her newborn boy,
attended on either side by women and by standards capped
with the head of Hathor, a cow goddess closely associated with
birth and motherhood. Photo: University of Pennsylvania
Museum.

PHILADELPHIA, PA Summer 2002University
of Pennsylvania Museum archaeologists have discovered a 3700-year-old
"magical" birth brick inside the palatial residence of a Middle
Kingdom mayors house just outside Abydos, in southern Egypt. The
colorfully decorated mud birth brickthe first ever foundis
one of a pair that would have been used to support a womans feet
while squatting during actual childbirth.

The birth brick, which measures 14 by 7 inches, was discovered during
summer 2001 excavations directed by Dr. Josef Wegner, Associate
Curator,
Egyptian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Archaeology
and Anthropology, and Assistant Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern
Studies,
University of Pennsylvania, part of a large-scale, ongoing joint
effort
of the combined University of Pennsylvania -Yale University-Institute
of Fine Arts/NYU Expedition to Abydos. The ancient brick still
preserves
colorful painted scenes and figures: clearly visible is a mother
holding
her newborn baby, as well as magical images of gods whose role was to
protect and aid the mother and baby at the time of birth.

According to Dr. Wegner, Egyptologists have long known, from
ancient texts,
that the standard form of childbirth in ancient Egypt was for the
woman
to deliver the baby while squatting on two mud bricks. The upper
surface
of the birth brick discovered at Abydos, unlike the bottom and sides,
is crumbled away. "It is quite possible," Dr Wegner
notes, "that
the damage to the top of the brick and another like it that has
not been preserved was caused by its use to support a woman's
feet
in childbirth for a long period of time and during multiple
deliveries."

And whose birth brick was
this? Dr.
Wegner and the Penn excavation team have a pretty good idea of who may
have used the birth brick: a noblewoman and princess named
Renseneb. Back
in the summer of 1999, the Penn team discovered (from seal impressions
with hieroglyphic texts and other objects) that the grandiose building
they were excavating was, in fact, the mayors residencethe
first ancient Egyptian mayors residence ever positively
identified.
The birth brick recently unearthed was in an area clearly
identified as
a female residential section of the house. Numerous inscribed clay
seal
impressions found in this area have the name of the
"noblewoman and
king's daughter Renseneb." Dr. Wegner suspects that this woman ,
who lived during Egypt's 13th Dynasty, may have been a princess who
was
married to one of the town's mayors.

Pictured
here is the site of the ancient mayor's residence, where the birth
brick was discovered. Photo: University of Pennsylvania
Museum.

In
ancient Egypt, where child mortality was high, Egyptians called
upon the
help of their gods through magical objects, like birth bricks, and
special
ritual practices during childbirth. The Egyptian birth brick was
associated
with a specific goddess, Meskhenet, sometimes depicted in the form of
a brick with a human head. On the newly discovered birth brick, the
main
scene shows a mother with her newborn boy, attended on either side by
women and by Hathor, a cow goddess closely associated with birth
and motherhood.

The Egyptians likened the birth of a child to the rising of the sun at
daybreak. The magical practices of childbirth were intended to protect
a newborn baby in a way paralleling Egyptian myths where the young sun
god required protection from hostile forces. On the birth brick
from the
Abydos excavation the sun god appears in symbolic form in the guise of
a desert cat. Images of the guardians of the sun god decorate the
sides
of the brick, to magically provide similar protection for mother
and child,
according to Dr. Wegner.

One set of objects closely associated with the recently discovered
birth
brick are magical wands usually decorated with scenes of deities
and demons--and
the Penn excavators have discovered fragments of these as well in the
mayor's residence. Egyptologists know that such wands were used in
a form
of "sympathetic magic" that invoked divine forces to protect
the newborn baby at the time of birth in the same way, according to
Egyptian
myth, that the allies of the sun god would protect him when he was
young
and vulnerable.

Dr. Wegner and his Penn team have been working in the Middle
Kingdom town
(circa 1850-1650 B.C.) named
"Enduring-are-the-Places-of-Khakaure-true-of-voice-in-Abydos,"
since 1994. The positive identification in 1999 of a mayor's
residence,
in this town that was organized around the service of Pharaoh
Senwosret
III's mortuary temple, was seen by Dr. Wegner as "a great
opportunity
to study an ancient mayor's lifestyle." The discovery of the
birth
brick offers another piece of the story of life at that time and a
rare
glimpse into motherhood and childbirth in Ancient Egypt.

The combined University of Pennsylvania-Yale University-Institute
of Fine
Arts/NYU Expedition to Abydos, working under permit from Egypt's
Supreme
Council of Antiquities, originally began as a joint co-sponsorship
between
Penn and Yale, and is under the co-directorship of Dr. David O'Connor
and Dr. W. K. Simpson. The Expedition has been exploring the region in
and around Abydos, an ancient culture center of the god Osiris, since
1967.